In a debate, need Help

[Trons]

Okay, so I'm debating whether poker is predominately skill or predominately luck with a friend and I need some statistics on how many hands are won or lost without going to showdown. I had to reformat my HD so my personal sample is lost, and I'm not sure this debate would accept my personal stats anyway.

I encourage you post your PT3 stats on how many hands you've played that did not go to showdown, regardless of whether you won or lost. Please help me out.

[bigred]

Ad hominem - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Specifically, the abusive section...

It's all you need for any debate...ever

[chemist]

You're both wrong.

It is FiftyFifty. Equal skill and luck.

Which means the skill gains a slight advantage.

[flomo]

Play 100,000 hands against your friend and if it is luck you should break even(excluding rake)

[surviva316]

kinda sounds like you're going in the wrong direction with your argument imo.

the skill advantage (especially at lower stakes) comes moreso from making pots very big when you're likely ahead and keeping pots small when you're behind. fish who are really bad allow you to get 3 streets of value out of them when you have top pair+ and they have a hand as bad as second pair top kicker, whereas when YOU have second pair you are able to get to showdown really cheap (or fold and not be cost much) when they have even extremely good hands (especially if they are out of position, fish tend to check and small bet a ton which allows you to lose a small amount of money).

the whole won without showdown argument isn't far from the argument that the Borgata East Coast Poker Tournament uses that's like "You both have two cards, and yours don't need to be better than theirs to take the pot down!!!!!!!" you're better off explaining how position allows you to control the size of the pot and explaining exploitability and proving how when someone limp/calls marginal hands preflop they like automatically lose money regardless of how they play the rest of the hand, etc.

i could show you my graphs with massif redlines, but the green line isn't as good as a lot of people who have break even or slightly winning redlines, thus at best complicating your point and at worst disproving it

[Penneywize]

I'm sure most of us have been down this road with our non-poker-playing friends before, and to be honest, it's just not an argument worth having. Does your life become better if you win this argument? Do you have even anything to gain at all from being 'proven right'?

Waste of time imo, at best you'll be proven right and look like a douche for bein' all 'see ha poker is a game of skill and I'm good at it, so allow me to justify my gambling addiction however I please'.

Anyhow if you are still convinced you want to prove them wrong, introduce them to PTR (Poker Rankings & Stats | PokerTableRatings.com) and pull up the stats of various winning players, and ask how it would be possible for a player to win over a large sample of several years and many millions of hands if the game were predominantly luck-based.

[bigred]

You're both wrong.

It is FiftyFifty. Equal skill and luck.

Which means the skill gains a slight advantage.

No, you're wrong because you are a bad person...I WIN

[StarGrinder]

Anyone who stubbornly thinks poker is all about luck is an idiot and not worth arguing with. It's like debating with a little kid.

[drmcboy]

Play 100,000 hands against your friend and if it is luck you should break even(excluding rake)

/thread

[eugmac]

Haha don't waste your breath. Good friend of mine always ends up saying something along the lines of, "well I just think certain people are just LUCKY with cards! that's why some people are winners and others losers..." I tried for a while to explain to him the hard math behind profitable plays, but in the end I realized there just isn't much point.

[Hawk]

While I agree that it's probably a waste of time, it can help to show extreme examples.

Even the most casual player understands that its bad to fold preflop when dealt AA or at any time when holding a royal flush. If they can see that there is a "bad" move then there must be a "good" move there, and they've basically agreed that there is a strategy. and from there it shouldn't be a stretch to understand that the skill is in coming up with the best strategy for a particular situation.

[eugmac]

While I agree that it's probably a waste of time, it can help to show extreme examples.

Even the most casual player understands that its bad to fold preflop when dealt AA.

But my aces lose every time.

[oskar]

How we think about poker situations is probably easiest to explain with a dice game with variable bet sizes. Everybody should understand that it's fair that each side bets the same amount on a coinflip. If he gives you $2 every time he looses and gains $1 everytime he wins he will probably not take that bet. If he does: stop arguing and get that game going.
You could make a game where one side makes a proposition and then the other side has to either take the proposition or take the other side.
So you could say you want to bet $3 on 1 and 2 on a 6 sided die and you want $7 if you loose. He can now either take it or switch.
I know it sounds dumb, but I think people who even get into this kind of argument might not understand how to beat this game.
You could also take the three card single street fixed limit game from mathematics of poker... there's a thread by spoonitnow about it somewhere. Play that with him. It's a thousand times easier than poker and most people will just not get behind it.

[Chelle]

lol just beat him up. tell him it isn't luck that you beat his ass, its your karate skills.

[supa]

You're both wrong.

It is FiftyFifty. Equal skill and luck.

Which means the skill gains a slight advantage.

Prove it.

[Shotglass]

But my aces lose every time.

Move up where they respect your raises.

[a500lbgorilla]

You both put 10 dollars on the table. You both whip it out. You take 20 dollars. This is how I resolve all of my debates.

[bigred]

You both put 10 dollars on the table. You both whip it out. You take 20 dollars. This is how I resolve all of my debates.

Opponent too busy laughing?

[a500lbgorilla]

*puts 10 dollars on the table*

Your move.

[BennyLaRue]

You're gonna eat it with some fava beans and a nice chianti, rilla?

[bigred]

O RLY?

[a500lbgorilla]

With my hands tied behind my back.

[PlayToWin]

Skill is determined by winning with the worst hand, right? Variations of skill are determined by minimizing losses and maximizing wins with the worst and best hands, respectively.

I think you need stats showing that the loose, fishy style of a losing player is crushed by a tighter, solid style of a more skilled player.

[StillDeadMoney]

This is how you solve the debate.

In the short run, poker has a strong element of luck: whoever has the better cards has a better chance of winning, all other things being equal.

In the long run, everyone gets the same "limiting distribution" of hands (i.e. everyone gets the same cards and hands to play with). Because each card has an unconditional probability of 1/52 to be dealt, the cards in poker form a uniform distribution, so the law of large numbers applies in a reasonable time frame. Because of this, you cannot blame luck for any kind of protracted length of success.

Professional poker players that play online for a living play tens of thousands of hands per month. For all intents and purposes, luck has nothing to do with it at that point, because the chances of getting good cards for that period of time is close to the chance to winning the powerball lottery... a few times in a row.

[supa]

Professional poker players that play online for a living play tens of thousands of hands per month. For all intents and purposes, luck has nothing to do with it at that point, because the chances of getting good cards for that period of time is close to the chance to winning the powerball lottery... a few times in a row.

wat.

[boost]

This is how you solve the debate.

In the short run, poker has a strong element of luck: whoever has the better cards has a better chance of winning, all other things being equal.

In the long run, everyone gets the same "limiting distribution" of hands (i.e. everyone gets the same cards and hands to play with). Because each card has an unconditional probability of 1/52 to be dealt, the cards in poker form a uniform distribution, so the law of large numbers applies in a reasonable time frame. Because of this, you cannot blame luck for any kind of protracted length of success.

Professional poker players that play online for a living play tens of thousands of hands per month. For all intents and purposes, luck has nothing to do with it at that point, because the chances of getting good cards for that period of time is close to the chance to winning the powerball lottery... a few times in a row.

10's of thousands? Lazy.

And you can most certainly deviat from your winrate quite a bit over relatively large samples. But then again, I think that this doesn't really show that poker is more luck based, but that everything in life is more luck based than people think.

[Trons]

Okay...maybe I was wrong to post this question here. I wanted poker players to post the amount of times a hand was won, without showdown. Regardless of whether they won or not. I did specifically state I was in a debate with a friend and this information would be valuable. The main reason it's valuable is because, you may have guessed it, there are no readily available data on this, apart from what's sitting in people's PT.

Now, what I get, instead of raw data, is a bunch of people telling me how to win the debate (or explaining why the information wouldn't be usefull). NEWSFLASH...

I'm the one in the debate and if the information contridicts my previous assumptions, I would like to know it before I make any assertions. If you do not have the information, guess what...a simple "I don't know how to use PT to do this" would suffice. If you would like to debate with me on the topic, Let me know. I am more then comfortable with my stance and need some raw data to help with that.

On the other hand, if you want to be like 2+2 and, instead of giving me the information I asked for, give me advise as to why I don't need it, please, feel free to mimic their screwed up society. I'll go elsewhere for the information. FTR has always been very good at being cool about this type of situation, which is why I came here.

Please, help me out and post your sample size and how many hands are won, or lost, without showdown.

[Ash256]

Okay...maybe I was wrong to post this question here. I wanted poker players to post the amount of times a hand was won, without showdown. Regardless of whether they won or not. I did specifically state I was in a debate with a friend and this information would be valuable. The main reason it's valuable is because, you may have guessed it, there are no readily available data on this, apart from what's sitting in people's PT.

Now, what I get, instead of raw data, is a bunch of people telling me how to win the debate (or explaining why the information wouldn't be usefull). NEWSFLASH...

I'm the one in the debate and if the information contridicts my previous assumptions, I would like to know it before I make any assertions. If you do not have the information, guess what...a simple "I don't know how to use PT to do this" would suffice. If you would like to debate with me on the topic, Let me know. I am more then comfortable with my stance and need some raw data to help with that.

On the other hand, if you want to be like 2+2 and, instead of giving me the information I asked for, give me advise as to why I don't need it, please, feel free to mimic their screwed up society. I'll go elsewhere for the information. FTR has always been very good at being cool about this type of situation, which is why I came here.

Please, help me out and post your sample size and how many hands are won, or lost, without showdown.

[Ash256]

btw, Trons is the Welsh word for underwear

[oskar]

The reason noone is telling you is because it's a useless statistic and has nothing to do with whether it's a game of skill or not.
If you move all in every hand you'll win a lot of hands without showdown. If you limp and check every hand you'll never win without showdown. How would that help you in a debate?

[kmind]

We're not going to give you fucking stats. For fucks sake who cares about the stupid argument?

NEWSFLASH: You sound like teen arguing about something you won't win because he won't listen. They never do.

[BennyLaRue]

OP, don't listen to them. This thread is better than that other thread you started about racism.